Sridevi would have turned 59 today, if only the legendary star was still with us

On August 13, Sridevi would have turned 59. Without a shadow of a doubt, she would have been as sensuous at 59 or 60 as she was when at 34 when she married Boney Kapoor. Ram Gopal Varma, one of the millions of diehard Sri fans, had gone into mourning after the wedding. “Why did she marry HIM, of all the people.”

I fully sympathized with Ramu. Sridevi could have married anyone. Like her Southern predecessor Hema Malini, she chose a married man with two children. Sridevi never looked back. “It was Boney ji and no one else. I felt protected and loved in his company. He took care of me before marriage. I was sure he would take care of me after marriage,” she let me into her personal thoughts once.

Soon after her marriage and the birth of her first born Janhvi Kapoor, Sridevi’s Judaai hit the screen. In the first week, it was summarily rejected as trash which, admittedly it was. But here is the thing: Sridevi’s career best performance is in this junk film. Her portrayal of a greedy, self-serving wife and insensitive mother was so flamboyantly filmy, it was as though Sridevi was satirizing and mocking every portrayal of the loud ill-mannered belligerent housewife, from Shashikala in Devar to Achala Sachdev in Kora Kagaz.

Judaai has over the years become Sridevi’s most hated film with her best-loved performance. A day after Janhvi was born, I was sitting with the gentle, soft-spoken Yash Chopra in his beautifully appointed bungalow, when his phone rang. It was Sridevi. My heart skipped a beat when I realized who it was.

Mr Chopra finished his conversation l and told me, “I told Sri that after Judaai, she can’t retire. No one can do what she can.”

I think he wanted her for Veer-Zaara.

I have to agree with such a true connoisseur of beauty who reinvented Sridevi’s career in Chandni. With this film, Sridevi became a Yash Chopra heroine. Thinned down to a chiselled charmer, and sharpening her subtle emotive skills, Sridevi delivered a knockout performance, which straightway propelled her to the top position. The film was an extended show-reel of her talent as she danced, sang, giggled and wept for the love of a tragically wheelchair-bound Rishi Kapoor.

Seldom has any Yash Chopra heroine made such sumptuous use of the camera space. Chandni is overrated, though Sridevi is absolutely enchanting in it, the scene-stealer was Rishi Kapoor. She was far superior in Yash Chopra’s Lamhe where she made Anil Kapoor look like a junior artiste. Sridevi, as we all know, is addictive. After Chandni, Yash Chopra brought her back to the screen in this bold love story of a girl who dares to love a man old enough to be her father. Sridevi played both the mother and the daughter with such distinctive flair that we wondered, could the same actress do so many different spectrums of emotion in the same film?

She was drop-dead gorgeous in Mr India. But she was just as good in the follow-up, Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja, which no one saw her in. And she was even better in Army, where she did a female version of Sanjeev Kumar in Sholay. It is the only film that brought Sridevi face-to-face with Shah Rukh Khan. In this film, there is a sequence where Shah Rukh, playing an army jawaan, is brought home dead. All through the film, Shah Rukh plays 'I-am-dead' pranks on Sridevi, so she presumes this is also one of those sick jokes. The way she goes from giggling to dismissal to shock and finally a breakdown in that sequence, is a textbook of pitch-perfect acting. Sridevi played a gender-reversed Amjad Khan's role in “Sholay” of a woman, who hires mercenaries to avenge the villain Danny Denzongpa. As it often happened, Sri was far superior to the material offered to her.

Sure, she is incredibly engaging in Chaalbaaz, Sadma and English Vinglish. But have you seen her in K Vishawanth’s Jaag Utha Insaan? Though it was Himmatwala that launched her into stardom in Bollywood (a role she got after Rekha turned it down), it was this unsuccessful nugget of a film produced by Rakesh Roshan and directed by the inimitable K. Vishwanath, where Sridevi shone as a temple dancer wooed by a Brahmin boy (Rakesh Roshan) and a socio-economically challenged underdog (Mithun Chakraborty). Sridevi danced and emoted as though there was no tomorrow. And as long as she did, we didn't care if there wasn't a tomorrow.

Flashback to the first time I spoke to the Diva. It was the days of the landline and I called Boney Kapoor in his hotel room. That unmistakable tinny voice answered the phone.

“Is that who I think it is?” I asked in a trembling voice.

She laughed without any cruelty. “Yes, this is Sridevi. Boneyji is not here at the moment. Can I take a message?”

We spoke many times thereafter and I reminded her of our first conversation. She said she remembered it. But I think she was only humouring me. Sridevi could never really hurt anyone. So why did she die such a cruel premature death?

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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